


Flinch War Rematch

by TheMouthKing



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: First Time, M/M, Pre-smut, Teasing, flinch game, gay chicken?, top!Link
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-14 23:50:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10546448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMouthKing/pseuds/TheMouthKing
Summary: Inspired byGMM #1108, Rhett and Link play another round or two of the Flinch Game. Can Rhett win this time?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Babashook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Babashook/gifts).



> As always, a big thank you to [Crazyquantum](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazyquantum/pseuds/Crazyquantum) for ideas and encouragement. My stuff wouldn't be nearly as good without you.

“Hey.”

“Hey man,” Rhett says, looking up from where he’s sitting on the sofa, laptop perched on his knees. There’s something off about Link today. Something keyed up and on edge, more than usual. Rhett’s chalking it up to filming the jeans and the flinching all in one day, riding the tension that built up between them until they needed to do anything else. It lead Rhett to the office to cool off. Or try to. 

Link sinks down into the sofa across from him, leans forward, elbows planted against his knees, hands fidgeting as he stares. He’s working up the nerve to say something, that’s obvious enough. Rhett’s seen this look on his face hundreds of times before, enough times to know that something’s turning in the wheels of his mind. 

“What’s up?”

“I wanna make you flinch,” Link says, blue eyes trained on gray, daring him. 

“Again?” Rhett chuckles, shaking his head as he half-tips the lid of his laptop closed, a wordless indication that he’s already on board, even though he’s putting up a fight. “Man, didn’t you get enough’a flinching when we were filming?”

“Well, I wanna give you a chance to even the score.”

“Even the score?” Rhett’s grins, nerves twisting in his belly at the look Link’s leveling at him. 

“Yeah, see if you can’t hold it together a little better without the cameras on… whaddaya say? Sudden death round for the title?”

It really doesn’t take much to stoke the competitive streak in Rhett. Just holding the chance to win out in front of him is more than enough. 

“Same rules?”

“Nah, sudden death… first to flinch loses.”

Rhett tenses because he knows Link plays dirty when he’s playing to win and the look in his eye tells him this is gonna be one of those times he’s pulling out all the stops. Like earlier, moving the chair, only worse now somehow, alone and without cameras trained on them. The thing is, Rhett plays dirty too, and now he’s got something to prove. 

“How do we know when to switch turns?” 

“We just call it… if you don’t flinch after what I got planned, it’s your turn… and back and forth till one of us does,” Link explains, edging forward in his seat just a bit more. Like he’s excited for this. 

“What do you have planned?”

“Don’t you worry about that, brother. You in?”

“Yeah I am,” Rhett answers without hesitation. He doesn’t shrink from a challenge. 

“Good,” Link says, pushing himself up to his feet and crossing over to sink down onto the sofa beside Rhett. 

Right beside Rhett. 

So close to him that their thighs are practically touching but _not quite_. It’s not unusual, really. Hell, it’s not unusual for them to end up sitting so they touch all the way from knee to hip, crowding into the other’s space. But something about this _is_ unusual. It’s the way Link’s looking at him, how he’s watching him with this intense scrutiny, searching for any hint that he’d flinched. 

Then his hand moves, hovers over Rhett’s thigh four inches up. 

“Link, what are you…” Rhett begins, but doesn’t get a chance to finish because Link interrupts, voice hushed. 

“I’m not touching you.”

 _’Is he fucking serious?’_ Rhett stares at Link’s hand there, hovering over his leg like he’s waiting for the right moment to slap him, and takes a deep breath. _’Don’t flinch, don’t flinch, don’t—‘_

Link’s hand starts to move till he’s got to twist to reach where his hand’s going, turn towards Rhett so he can see him while he messes with him. The hand circles wide over his lap and then comes in close to his body and he starts to wiggle his fingers like he’s about to tickle party him but he doesn’t — his fingers never quite touch his body. But somehow, that doesn’t keep Rhett from feeling something, this tight clench in his gut, a twist of anticipation that at any second Link was gonna touch him. Lunge in and go for the kill, tickle him cause he knows he hates it. He’s breathing faster, staring Link dead in the eye and trying not to look down at the hand that’s still wiggling by his belly. Too close to his groin for his liking. 

_Or not close enough,_ his mind helpfully supplies the image of that hand laying down between his legs and cupping him, fingers rubbing instead of wiggling. 

“…you done with your turn yet?” Rhett asks, voice a little lower than he thought it’d come. 

“I’ll tell you when I’m done.” 

Link says it with more force than he’s comfortable with. Rhett’s getting pretty uncomfortable, actually…

“You just—“

“Focus on not flinching, Rhett, stop talking.”

Rhett lets out a long, slow breath, steadying himself with it, and he manages not to react, not to move. He’s staring Link dead in the eye and that means he’s not looking down, not seeing what his hand is doing. It feels like he can feel it, though, in his aura maybe. Like they don’t even need to touch for electricity to crackle between them. Rhett immediately regrets the thought, overly sentimental, sappy even. It’s not like they’ve ever… _well_. 

“You flinched.” 

“What?” Rhett asks, startled out of his thoughts. His attention had drifted lower, but he hadn’t flinched. He _hadn’t._ “No way, I just… I made a face,” he’d done that instant replay of his thoughts thing, feeling like what he was thinking was obvious on his face, that sort of instantaneous cringe… but he hadn’t flinched. 

“Fine, alright… you get a pass this time. It’s your turn.”

Link settles back against the sofa, hands resting on his thighs, the nervous energy in him obvious in how he can’t get his hands to settle down. Rhett wants those hands on him. 

Thoughts like that aren’t helping this at all. 

What the hell is he supposed to do now? Something new? He’s drawing a blank and it goes on a beat too long. He’s feeling the pressure to deliver on the challenge, to win this rematch, and earlier they’d just done the same thing back and forth, each of them having a go at it, so he ends up half-turning and reaching out to almost-but-not-quite touch Link. He hovers his hand over his chest, but as he’d gone to turn in so he could square up eye to eye, Link had leaned in just enough that this round didn’t feel like a game of _I’m not touching you_ , but instead a game of gay chicken. Rhett’s close enough to Link’s face that he could kiss him. It’d be easy to just lean in… 

So he does. Lean in, that is. He keeps it slow, real slow, moving almost imperceptibly closer to Link as the seconds tick past, Rhett’s heart practically beating out of his chest. When did the game escalate this far? Rhett’s gaze flicks down to Link’s mouth and he almost licks his lips, but he catches himself, realizes how that’d look. He’s so hyper aware of everything his body is doing, how slowly he’s leaning in, pushing at this boundary between them. 

He can’t account for everything, though. He’s so focused on Link’s face and what his own is doing that he doesn’t realize his hand’s about to make contact with Link’s chest, and when it does, when his palm presses warm against the center of his chest he startles himself. 

Link breaks into a wide, giddy grin and laughs at him, high and full of energy, all the tension in him escaping in that laugh. “You flinched yourself, man!”

“No I didn’t!”

“You so did,” Link can’t stop himself grinning and just stares up at Rhett, his eyes warm with something more than fondness.

“It wasn’t even my turn to be flinching, it doesn’t count,” Rhett protests, face hot. The game is getting to be too much too soon. Just _too much_ regardless of how soon. Rhett’s not sure he can take another round. Any resolve, any confidence he’d come into this with is swiftly dwindling. 

“You know what ‘Sudden Death Round’ means? It means the first to flinch is the loser. How many times you gonna ask me to make an exception for you?” 

Rhett gives Link a playful shove, overwhelmed by all this not-touching between them (and that one brief second of touching) that he’s gotta touch him, gotta find something normal to re-start his system. Like a palette cleanser. Like sorbet in between courses. 

“I’m not asking for an exception, just how does it make sense that I lose when I’m trying to get you to flinch?”

“Then just stop flinching,” Link shoves Rhett back, and the big man’s shrugging his shoulder up to his ear, like he’s trying to block more attacks. 

“Alright, alright, fine,” Rhett leans away from him. 

“You ready?” Link asks, shifting away from him a little, like he’s gearing up. Like he’s preparing to strike. 

Rhett doesn’t feel ready. He feels so on edge, so unsettled that he’s the furthest thing from ready for the next round. It feels like the barest thing could set him off right now, and how he’d upped the ante on the last round, he’s half-terrified what Link’s going to try this time to get a rise out of him. 

A reaction. 

A _flinch,_ damnit. Thinking about it like a reaction or a rise gives different connotations, like they’re playing a very different game. Or are they already playing that dangerous game? The look on Link’s face says they might be. 

“Yes,” Rhett says, voice hushed, not matching the initial levity of the game at all.

When Link’s hand slaps down on the center of his chest, Rhett shivers but manages to contain himself, manages to stay still, though he’s sure Link will feel the racing of his heart beating wild in his chest. Rhett’s eyes are huge and he’s staring at Link. 

“Isn’t this against the rules?”

Rhett’s beginning to panic.

“There’s no rules.”

“But—“

“That was before. Stop talkin’, just keep your eyes open and don’t flinch, okay?”

Rhett nods, slow and steady. “Mmkay…”

Link’s hand starts to drag down Rhett’s chest, thumb catching every button all the way down intentionally. He watches, sees as Rhett’s eyes begin to close, like he’s starting to sink beneath the weight of this. 

“Eyes open, Rhett… watch me.”

It feels so much more intimate when he’s watching Link. When their eyes are locked together and Link’s half leaning over him, hand rubbing low over his chest and then back up in these long, smooth circles, the warmth of his hand seeping through the thin fabric of his shirt. Rhett wasn’t just messing around with the Booty Knot Song, he really did like it when people touched his chest. Thing is, he’s cursing himself for it now because of course Link’s gonna use that kind of information against him. 

After a few passes down and back up, Link’s hand just rubs lower and lower until it’s hovering above the waist of his jeans and that’s when Link begins to move. Up and off the sofa and down onto the floor. On his knees, between Rhett’s legs. 

_He’s not flinching._ He is breathing faster, though, eyes wide as he stares down at Link. Focus, he’s just gotta focus. He tries to just watch Link’s face, to keep his attention on those blue eyes but it’s getting harder. The hand on his belly is joined by another, resting on his knee and traveling up as he settles in closer. It’s an impossible task to stay still, to not move, to just sit here and let Link touch him and not react. It feels almost like when your leg falls asleep and you know you gotta be still or else it’ll hurt, all pins and needles, and how even then it’s like you just can’t. 

The hand on his belly comes down and joins the other on his thigh, at his hips, and pushes back up, intentionally avoiding where he knows he’d find an easy victory because he’s not done playing with Rhett yet. He’s not done pushing. And Rhett’s not alone with the nerves, with the tight squeeze of tension in his belly. 

Because this isn’t a game they’re playing, not really. If it is, it’s a game with stakes too high, a game too dangerous to lose. 

Link catches the hem of Rhett’s shirt in both hands and pushes it up his chest as far as he can reach, letting his thumbs drag all along that bare skin, the soft dusting of hair. He leaves it and touches his way back down, his short, neat fingernails skimming down his chest and belly, over his jeans, until his hands lay against the big man’s hips, his spread thumbs bracketing his fly, the bulge beneath it that tells Link that while he might not have flinched, that this isn’t leaving him unaffected. 

Rhett feels like he’s got to stop this, got to say something before this gets out of control, as if it isn’t already. He’s sitting here with his best friend of thirty years’ hands framing his half-hard cock through his jeans and if he just fucking flinched, Link would stop. 

So just fucking flinch then… flinch and be done with it. Walk away from this. But that means backing down, it means losing, it means letting Link win and that’s not something he wants to do. Not something he thinks he can do. 

He feels trapped here, but he doesn’t want to get away. The guise of the game lets him stay in this limbo, lets him enjoy Link’s hands on his body without needing to talk about it. The fact that it’s just a tease, that once the game ends he’s going to be left with nothing, it’s what keeps him from moving. Keeps him deathly still and silent, desperate to keep this going as long as he possibly can. 

But then Link’s thumb drags slow over the length of Rhett’s cock through his jeans. 

This soft, broken sound escapes Rhett, a groan he can’t keep in. 

“You flinched…” Link’s voice comes low and honey sweet, but Rhett’s not dumb enough to think that means this is gonna go his way. He knows Link plays dirty, that there’s practically no low to which he won’t stoop to win.

Rhett’s head falls back against the sofa in defeat and he sighs heavy, hating himself for breaking this fragile thing they were playing at. He tries to take a deep breath, to steel himself against whatever happens next. He can’t even argue it this time because he knows he did, he knows he did. 

“…that wasn’t fair.”

“Never said it was gonna be.” 

Link’s hands haven’t moved, though, they’re still resting on his hips, fingertips still pressing all on him through his jeans. 

“What… what’s the punishment for losing?” Rhett needs to try twice, needs to pause and lick his lips, mouth dry. 

The near silence of the room is broken by the sound of a zipper slowly being undone.

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoy comments! :D


End file.
